Claude de Marolles
Father of Michel de Marolles, Abbé de Villeloin
Engraved by Claude Mellan from his own design
Size of the original engraving, 9¼ × 7⅜ inches
The tastes and the mania for collecting of the Abbé de Villeloin were so well known that it is not impossible that it was he of whom La Bruyère was thinking when, in his famous “Caractères,” he gives the following description of a collector:
“‘You wish to see my prints,’ says Democenes, and he forthwith brings them out and sets them before you. You see one which is neither dark nor clear nor completely drawn, and better fit to decorate on a holiday the walls of the Petit Pont or the Rue Neuve than to be treasured in a famous collection. He admits that it is engraved badly and drawn worse, but hastens to inform you that it is the work of an Italian artist who produced very little, and that the plate had hardly any printing; that, moreover, it is the only one of its kind in France; that he paid much for it, and would not exchange it for something far better. ‘I am,’ he adds, ‘in such a serious trouble that it will prevent any further collecting. I have all of Callot but one print, which is not only not one of his best plates, but actually one of his worst; nevertheless, it would complete my Callot. I have been looking for it for twenty years, and, despairing of success, I find life very hard, indeed.’”
This is admirably descriptive of a born collector; and what would have been a ridiculous mania in a philistine became a natural attitude on the part of such a connaisseur as the Abbé de Marolles. In our eyes his weaknesses were insignificant, and we forgive him his bad translations, his unpublished history of Art, and the rather monotonous self-sufficiency of his Memoirs, for the encouragement which his honest enthusiasm and indomitable collecting gave to the artists who made the Golden Age of Engraving—for having been the Prince of Print-collectors.
JEAN MORIN
1600-1666
By LOUIS R. METCALFE
THE Exhibitions of French Engraved Portraits of the Seventeenth Century recently made at the New York Public Library and at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, give one an excellent idea of the vogue of the portrait and the excellence attained by that remarkable school of engravers which flourished under the auspices of Louis XIV. A score of masters are represented, from Michael Lasne to the superb Nanteuil, and their models, the most representative personages of that grand century of French history, whether plotters against Henry IV, friends and foes of Richelieu or flatterers of Louis XIV, stand proudly on parade for the twentieth-century American, in all their glory of immense wigs, armor and lace collars, or in the quieter garb of prelates and counselors to the king. It is a remarkable illustration to the history of a great period. The nobility represented the survival of the fittest, for in the early part of the century four thousand of them had died in those street duels which Richelieu had abolished only with the help of the executioner. As to the clergy, no wonder that so many of those portly prelates could afford to have their portraits painted and engraved: the wealth of the church had never been greater. Their example was followed by every one of any importance in the public eye; he had his portrait made with no more hesitation than one has nowadays to sit to a photographer of recognized excellence.